Gisele Bündchen: Make mums breast-feed by law

Supermodel Gisele Bündchen has called for a ‘worldwide law’ making it compulsory for new mothers to breast-feed for at least six months.

Supermodel Gisele Bündchen in the September issue of Harper’s Bazaar, out on Thursday (Pic: Harper’s Bazaar)

Aside from her concerns about giving babies man-made formula milk, she says maintaining a good figure is another good reason to do it. If that’s not enough, she also meditated during her eight-hour-long home labour in Boston, US, to deliver her son Benjamin last December.

Calling for a formula ban, she says: ‘Some people think they don’t have to breast-feed and I think, “Are you going to give chemical food to your child when they are so little?”

‘I think there should be a worldwide law that mothers should breast-feed their babies for six months. Breast-feeding really helped me keep my figure,’ she tells Harper’s Bazaar magazine.

Gisele, 30, only had her husband, American footballer Tom Brady, 32, her mum, a close friend and midwife present at the birth.

The September issue of Harper’s Bazaar

‘Not for one second did it cross my mind that I was not going to have my baby at home. I’m not the first person to give birth naturally. Billions of other women have come before me and have done this – so why can’t I do it?’ she says.

She also did yoga three times a week. ‘It prepared me mentally and physically,’ she said. ‘It’s called ‘‘labour’’, not ‘‘holiday’’, for a reason and I knew that. You want to go into the most intense physical experience of your life unprepared? That doesn’t make sense to me. I wasn’t expecting someone else to get the baby out of me.’